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economic impacts of globalisation for different groups of older
people? These impacts include not only the distribution of
wealth but also migration and the redistribution of people
around the world. What are the consequences of migration for
older people?
" There have been various demographic crises identified. Rapid
growth in world population is identified as one such crisis.
The ageing of populations across the globe is presented as
another. Are these demographic threats real?
" The world is also seen to be under threat from a variety of
human-induced changes to the global environment global
warming, depletion of the ozone layer and spreading and
accumulating pollutants are but three such threats. What is
the relationship between old age and these environmental
crises?
Globalisation seems to be a common factor in all three of
these problem areas. It is a complex phenomenon with a variety
of components and indeed many would argue that it is not a
single phenomenon.1 However, globalisation has been linked to
social changes with impacts in all nations including aspects
of communications, finance and capital, trade and industry,
cultural pluralism, environment, health, disease and pollution.
Communication of goods, people and information has become
faster, cheaper and is conducted in ever-increasing volumes.
Long-distance trade has a venerable history, but the extent of
it on a global scale, and the extent to which local markets have
to accommodate themselves to global markets are unprecedented.
Knowledge of the world, and religious and political ideas and
institutions, are much more freely available with profound social
and cultural consequences, not least in the undermining of
56 global crises and old age
tradition as an authority for knowledge. In a global environment
the common health of humanity depends on absence of pollution
and disease throughout the world.
OLDER PEOPLE AND POVERTY
Poverty is the greatest obstacle to a secure old age in most of the
world. With the possible exceptions of a few Scandinavian
countries, older people feature significantly in the poorer sections
of all societies. The United Nations Development Programme
has estimated that only 20 per cent of people aged 60 or over in
the world can be regarded as having income security. Retirement
pensions are available to only a small proportion of the world s
older people. Only 30 per cent of people aged 60 and over world-
wide are eligible for any form of pension and most of these live
in more developed countries. Pensions are most frequently the
prerogative of those who work for government or for the formal
sector of the economy; even in many quite highly developed
countries the rural population has little or no cover. This does
not necessarily mean that older people always become dependent
on the support of families or others. Older people develop a
variety of strategies for earning a living, for themselves and in
support of their families. Many older people across the world
continue to work for as long as they are physically able.
How does globalisation affect the unequal distribution of the
benefits and disadvantages of old age? The political economy
of later life is well developed in the social gerontological liter-
ature. We can use it to acquire an understanding of the social and
cultural consequences of the worldwide division of labour. The
impact of globalisation on older people may be examined by
asking: How is the division of labour organised? Who gains
from the way the division of labour is organised? We can use this
framework to ask about the specific position of older people
compared to other social groups in the global economy and about
how older people fit into the structure of competing interests
which make up modern world society.
global crises and old age 57
The first question is about the social relationships that enable
society to organise production and create wealth the division
of labour. The division of labour is organised on an increasingly
global scale different parts of the world specialising in different
kinds of production and different groups of people playing
the constituent roles in the total process. This production is
co-ordinated through global markets and global enterprises.
Who has access to and who is excluded from the world market
in labour? At the front of the queue are well-qualified profes-
sionals frequently from the West, near the back are unskilled
workers from the Third World. This is demonstrated by the
growing crisis in attempts to police international labour markets
with more and more draconian anti-immigration measures. The
poorest older people are those left behind by labour migration
in the rural Third World, unsupported either by state welfare or
attenuated kinship ties. As the spread of markets undermines
divisions of labour based on the family, older people s social
position is weakened.
In a society structured around the labour market, if most
older people are retired or are excluded from access to paid work,
they will be in a relatively weak and dependent position. This
insight should not be taken to mean that older people do not
engage in productive work. A variety of studies by HelpAge
International and others suggest that the work undertaken by
older people may be a paid job in the formal sector, but for many
it may also include childcare, agriculture, trading, and other
informal and sometimes unpaid duties. They estimate that half
the world s older people are entirely reliant on informal liveli-
hood arrangements. As a result, older people s contribution to
their communities and societies is often not recorded in official
statistics. Older people often make important contributions to
their families; for example, domestic help can free up the time of
other relatives to earn an income for the family.2 While some older
people are cared for by relatives, for many families poverty and
other commitments, including the need to work, make this diffi-
cult. Older people strive for reciprocity and make contributions
58 global crises and old age
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